America's Greatest 20th Century Presidents (14 page)

General Bradley

Eisenhower left West Point to find a more appealing surprise waiting for him.  After graduation, he was stationed in Texas, where he quickly met a young woman named Mamie Geneva Doud.  The two quickly hit things off, and were engaged in 1916.  Due to the impending breakout of World War I, the Eisenhower marriage was moved ahead, and the two were married in July of that year at the home of Mamie’s parents. Given the young officer’s demanding military schedule, the couple basically had no honeymoon, spending a few days in Colorado and a few days back in Abilene, Kansas before heading back to Fort Houston, where Ike was stationed. The quick moving wouldn’t end for another 4 decades; altogether, Mamie and Ike moved nearly 30 times during the course of their lives, only finally settling down after he left the White House in 1961.

The couple had two sons, but only younger son John survived childhood, and fittingly he went on to have a decorated military career and write several World War II related books, including one about the Battle of the Bulge. 

Dwight and Mamie in 1916

Chapter 2: Early Military Career, 1916-1940

World War I

Dwight Eisenhower had graduated from West Point in 1915 at the age of 25, an age long considered the prime of life. Certainly it was a fighting age, so while it is no surprise that Dwight Eisenhower would see combat during a World War, it’s surprising that Ike never saw combat in World War I.  However, that was not his choice; his initial appeals for an assignment overseas at the height of the war were denied, and instead he remained in the infantry at home, moving to various bases in the United States.  Stuck stateside, he gradually rose in rank while gaining experience with tanks, a novelty piece of military equipment at the time.

Because tanks were a new mode of warfare during World War I, Eisenhower's expertise on the issue was especially valuable. A large part of his work in the army involved training other members in the use of tanks, which he had mastered, and he trained young men in tank warfare in places like Texas, Georgia, and most famously at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where the camp was situated on the spot where Pickett’s Charge had taken place over 50 years earlier.

Normally a captain, Eisenhower's skill with tanks was so highly valued that he was promoted quickly to the temporary rank of Lieutenant Colonel, which actually worked against his wishes to see combat.  His superiors feared sending him to the active duty theater in Europe; because he was proving so valuable at home teaching others that they decided removing him from that position would hurt the Army. When Ike’s unit was finally called to serve overseas, it was quickly brought to a halt by the Armistice that ended the war on November 11, 1918. Eisenhower had proved adept at military organization and assessing and properly placing talented personnel, but he never saw active duty throughout the war, a fact that would haunt him for a generation.

During the war, though, Eisenhower made important contacts with other rising member of the U.S. Army.  Among them was George S. Patton, who served alongside him briefly in the tank corps.  He and Patton believed that the tank weaponry was especially powerful, and that increased use would give added force to the Allied effort.  Superiors, however, thought otherwise.  While they liked the tank, the tanks of that time period were cumbersome and burdensome, and they lacked the devastating firepower that later upgrades would bring. For that reason, the fighting men of World War I didn't foresee the need to emphasize the use of tanks to the same extent Eisenhower did.  Of course, the U.S. and its allies eventually won the war in 1918 without extended use of the tanks, and their true value wouldn’t be made fully clear until the Nazi blitzkrieg in 1939-1940 at the outset of the World War II.

Patton in France, 1918

Camp Meade and the Panama Canal

Ike (far right) in 1919

After World War I ended, Eisenhower’s temporary promotion was reverted, but he didn’t remain Captain for long. Within weeks, he was promoted to Major. Shortly after the war was over, Eisenhower took part in the “Transcontinental Motor Convoy,” in which a convoy of military vehicles traversed the country from Washington D.C. to San Francisco. Automobiles were still rather new, and in 1919 there was just one transcontinental road. Ike would later recall the journey wistfully, but the state of the roads reduced the convoy to a snail’s pace. It took two months for the convoy to cross the country, meaning it had traveled on average under 10 miles a day. About 25 years later, Eisenhower would come into contact with Germany’s “Autobahn” highway while at the head of over a million men as the Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, and the difference was so stark that it would provide all the motivation necessary for President Eisenhower to upgrade the nation’s transportation with a network of interstate highways.

Eventually, Eisenhower settled into a new location at Camp George G. Meade in Maryland, named after the victorious commander of the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg, which would ultimately become Eisenhower’s home. For the time being, however, Camp Meade would be his home until 1922, during which he continued to focus his efforts on the tactics and technology of tanks with the intent of convincing his superiors to embrace the weaponry. At times, Eisenhower's tank enthusiasm nearly got him into trouble.  He began publishing pieces in support of the tanks, but was threatened with a court martial because the writings contradicted the commands of higher offices.  Eisenhower threw in the towel and decided to relent on the tank issue.

By 1922, Eisenhower was given a much more exciting and “active” assignment in the Panama Canal zone, where he took a staff position under Executive Officer Fox Conner, who was commanding the 20
^th
brigade and who Ike later called “
the ablest man I ever knew." Conner was just as effusive with his praise of Eisenhower, labeling Ike “one of the most capable, efficient and loyal officers I have ever met.
”  While he continued to bolster his administrative resume serving as a staffer for Conner, his time in Panama also proved to be a learning opportunity.  Because there was no warfare going on around the Canal, Eisenhower spent much of his time studying military tactics, in particular the seminal military treatise
On War
, written in the 19
^th
century by the Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz.  Much of what he learned in Panama influenced his later strategies in World War II.

Fox Conner, who would later be called “the man who made Eisenhower”

Because of Conner's support, Eisenhower decided to increase his military education with more formal training.  From 1925-1926, he attended the Command General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.  There, his enthusiasm for warfare was much more appreciated than it was at West Point, and he graduated as valedictorian, first in a class of 245 officers. 

Depression and Peacetime

By the mid-1920's, America’s military priorities were gradually being put on the backburner. With relative peace taking hold across the world, especially in Europe, the need to rigorous military training and engagement seemed unnecessary. Many of Eisenhower's closest military friends resigned from the army and found high-paying jobs in the private sector.  Eisenhower, however, was in the army for the long haul and opted to stay in throughout the interwar years.

Eisenhower performed a variety of military-related activities throughout this period.  His first assignment was with the American Battle Monuments Commission, for which he produced a guide to American battlefields for European readers.  Assisted in this task by his brother Milton, who was a journalist with the government’s Agriculture Department, the assignment helped Eisenhower view the nation’s military engagements in a global perspective.

Later, just years before the Great Depression, Eisenhower moved on to the Army War College, from which he graduated in 1928.  From there, Eisenhower's military career began to pick up.  He spent a year stationed in France, where he was able to see the great battlefields of World War I for the first time in his life.  It would not, however, be his last.

Amid the Great Depression, Eisenhower received a promotion, so the effects of the economic downturn were limited in his personal life.  After doing a stint for a year in France, he became a secretary for the Assistant Secretary of War, bringing him into national policymaking for the first time and offering him a chance to engage in future military planning, albeit on a constrained budget caused by the Great Depression.  Later, he was promoted to be a chief military advisor to the Army Chief of Staff, one of the highest ranking leaders in the U.S. Army. The Chief of Staff at the time happened to be none other than former classmate Douglas MacArthur.